I completely agree. Having recently traveled through this new nightmare of a security setup, I actually long for the old serpentine lines up in the departures area. Don't get me started about the train. Never before did I think I would long for moonbuggies.

Alas, I'd be stunned if anyone at MWAA cares or reads this post and has any reaction. They think everything is new and gleaming and thats enough.

One of things on a basic "design" idea was that just as a matter of safety, you really shouldn't have escalators that continuously dump people into an area that could "fill" up. There's really no place for people to move forward and out of the way if people kept pouring down the escalators and TSA was backed up. There's a better chance of winning the lottery than TSA realizing this and getting someone to get up to the top of the escalators and "stop" people from heading down to screening. I see this done all the time at several Washington Metro Subway stations when a big game at Verizon Center or Nationals Stadium lets out. Metro knows the platforms can get overloaded, so they post cops/Metro supervisors at the top of the escalators to keep people from going down to the platforms until a train is loaded and the platform is clear for more passengers. I could never imagine TSA having such foresight to be ready for such a situation.

As an aside, I found the TSA folks at the new checkpoint to be highly inexperienced. It seemed every single item going through the scanners required a supervisor to come over and take a look. It may have been a "new" TSA worker, but I seemed to notice it at more than one scanning station. And, of course, there were not enough supervisors to go around. You get the picture.

A complete disaster, three steps back, whatever you want to call it.